The present invention generally relates to facsimile apparatuses, and more particularly to a facsimile apparatus for receiving facsimile transmissions selectively upon discrimination of a calling station.
With the wide-spread use of facsimile apparatus, the function of facsimile apparatus has been improved and augmented significantly. For example, there is a facsimile apparatus that can receive a facsimile transmission and print the content of transmission automatically on a recording sheet without intervention of an operator. Further, there is a facsimile apparatus having the capability of broadcasting transmissions wherein a document is transmitted to a plurality of destinations automatically one after another.
With such a wide-spread use of facsimile apparatus and improvements in their function, there arises a problem or inconvenience such as the facsimile apparatus receives unnecessary or unwanted facsimile transmission, like an advertisement. Such unwanted facsimile transmission wastes the recording sheet.
In order to cope with such a problem, a facsimile apparatus is proposed as disclosed in the Japanese Patent Publication No.64-74868 in which telephone numbers of facsimile apparatus are registered in a memory and the facsimile apparatus carries out comparison of the telephone number of the calling station with the telephone number registered in the memory. The facsimile apparatus accepts the transmission only when the telephone number of the calling station is included in the list of telephone numbers that is stored in the memory as the closed user group. When the telephone number of the calling station does not agree, the reception of the facsimile transmission is rejected. Further, there is proposed a facsimile apparatus wherein a terminal identification code of a calling station that is transmitted with the facsimile transmission from the calling station is compared with the terminal identification codes that are stored in the memory and accepts the facsimile transmission only when the transmitted terminal identification code agrees with the stored terminal identification code.
In any of these previous facsimile apparatuses, the identification code of the station or user in the closed user group has to be inputted into the memory by the operator who operates the keyboard or other inputting device of the facsimile apparatus.
In such a conventional facsimile apparatus, however, there has been a problem, caused as a result of the manual inputting of the identification information such as the telephone number or terminal identification code, such that the registration process of the identification information is tedious and inconvenient. Further, there has been a problem in that the rejection of the facsimile transmission is not reported to the operator even when a facsimile transmission is rejected. The information about the terminal that has sent the rejected facsimile transmission is not brought to the operator, either. As a result, facsimile transmissions that are useful, desired or essential for the user of the facsimile apparatus may be rejected without being noticed when the terminal code or the identification code of the calling station is not registered. Obviously, such a deficiency may lead to a disastrous result of failing to receive important or critical facsimile transmissions in time.